LITMIR.BIZ

      Clouds were showing in the west. The vapour, rising over the North Sea, drifted slowly eastwards to heap white and grey thunderheads above the coast. The farmers feared heavy rain that would crush their ripening crops.

      No such worries crossed the mind of the Prussian Major who had been sent to Brussels with news of the French advance and details of the Prussian response. The despatch told how the Prussian garrison at Charleroi was falling back, not on Brussels, but north-east to where the main Prussian army was assembling. The Major’s news was vital if the British and Dutch troops were to join the Prussians.

      The Major faced a journey of thirty-two miles. It was a sunny and very hot day, and he was tired and monstrously fat. The exertions of the first five miles when he had thought the Dragoons might burst from behind every hedgerow or farmhouse had exhausted both the Major and his horse, so once he felt safe he sensibly slowed to a contemplative and restoring walk. After an hour he came to a small roadside inn that stood on the crest of a shallow hill and, twisting in his saddle, he saw that the inn gave him a good view of the road right to the horizon so that he would see any French pursuit long before it represented any danger. Nothing moved on the road now except for a man driving eight cows from one pasture to another.

      The Major eased himself out of the saddle, slid heavily to the ground, and tied his horse to the inn’s signpost. He spoke passably good French and enjoyed discussing food with the pretty young serving girl who came out to the table by the roadside, which the Major had adopted as his vantage point. He decided on roast chicken and vegetables, with apple pie and cheese to follow. He requested a bottle of red wine, but not of the common kind.

      The sun shone on the long road to the south. Haymakers scythed steadily in a meadow a half-mile away, while much further off, far beyond the blur of fields and woods, dust whitened the sky. That was the artificial cloud kicked up by an army, but no troops threatened the Major’s peaceful rest and so he saw no reason to make undue haste, especially as the roast chicken proved to be excellent. The chicken’s skin was crisped nicely and its yellow flesh was succulent. When the girl brought the Major his pie, she asked him if Napoleon was coming.

      ‘Don’t you worry, my dear! Don’t you worry.’

      Far to the Major’s north, in Brussels, a detachment of Highland soldiers had been ordered to the Duke of Richmond’s house, where they were shown into the dazzling ballroom hung with the Belgian colours. Before supper was served the Highlanders would offer the guests a display of their dancing.

      The Highlander Lieutenant asked that one of the unlit chandeliers be raised from floor level so he could make certain there would be adequate room for his dancers’ crossed swords. The Duchess, intent that every particular of her ball should be arranged to perfection, insisted on a demonstration. ‘You are bringing pipers tonight?’ the Duchess demanded.

      ‘Indeed, Your Grace.’

      Which only gave the Duchess a new detail to worry over: how would the orchestra leader know when to stop his men playing so that the pipers could begin?

      Her husband averred that doubtless the orchestra and the pipers would arrange things to their own satisfaction, and further opined that the Duchess should leave the ball’s arrangements to those who were paid to worry about the details, but the Duchess was insistent on voicing her concerns this afternoon. She earnestly asked her husband whether she should request the Prince of Orange not to bring Lieutenant-Colonel Sharpe?

      ‘Who’s Sharpe?’ the Duke asked from behind his copy of The Times.

      ‘He’s the husband of Johnny Rossendale’s girl. She’s coming, I’m afraid. I tried to stop him bringing her, but he’s clearly besotted.’

      ‘And this Sharpe is her husband?’

      ‘I just told you that, Charles. He’s also an aide to Slender Billy.’

      The Duke grunted. ‘Sharpe’s clearly a fool if he lets an idiot like Johnny Rossendale cuckold him.’

      ‘That’s precisely why I think I should talk to the Prince. I’m told this Sharpe is an extremely uncouth man and is more than likely to fillet Johnny.’

      ‘If he’s uncouth, my dear, then doubtless he won’t wish to attend your ball. And I certainly wouldn’t mention the matter to Orange. That bloody young fool will only bring Sharpe if he thinks it’ll cause trouble. It’s a sleeping dog, my dear, so let it lie.’

      But it was not in the Duchess’s nature to let anything remain undisturbed if it was amenable to her interference. ‘Perhaps I should mention it to Arthur?’

      The Duke snapped his newspaper down to the table. ‘You will not trouble Wellington about two damned fools and their silly strumpet.’

      ‘If you say so, Charles.’

      ‘I do say so.’ The rampart of newspaper was thrown up, inviting silence.

      The other English Duke in Brussels, Wellington, would have been grateful had he known that Richmond had spared him the Duchess’s worries, for the Commander-in-Chief of the British and Dutch armies already had more than enough worries of his own. One of those worries, the smallest of them, was the prospect of hunger. Wellington knew from bitter experience that he would be required to make so much conversation at the Duchess’s ball that his supper would inevitably congeal on its plate. He therefore ordered an early dinner of roast mutton to be served in his quarters at three o’clock that afternoon.

      Then, noting that clouds were building to the west, he took his afternoon walk about the fashionable quarter of Brussels. He took care to appear blithely unworried as he strolled with his staff, for he knew only too well how the French sympathizers in the city were looking for any sign of allied defeatism that they could turn into an argument to demoralize the Dutch-Belgian troops.

      The quality of those troops was at the heart of the Duke’s

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